Bob Garfield has a great long piece in AdAge today asking why more marketers aren't using widgets. Since Garfield is one of the more thoughtful commentators on the state of advertising today, I usually wade through his long pieces, and this one is well worth it. (Meanwhile, if you haven't read them, Garfield also penned seminal pieces back in 2005 on the "Chaos Scenario" facing the marketing industry, and the rise of "Listenomics.")
Widgets are mini-software applications that sit on your computer, smart phone, home page, or social networking site and provide a simple news feed, video player, interactive game, or simulation. They are typically designed to bring the user back to a full website and often designed to go viral. Apple, among others, helped bring them to life with the Dashboard on OSX and the wildly popular apps and App Store on the iPhone. Facebook and MySpace have also done a great job popularizing the approach, and a number of agencies now specialize in developing widgets for advertising campaigns.
The basic idea is to give people a bit of your brand in the form of digital information or entertainment, and they've begun to catch on big time in the B2C world. For example, Southwest Airlines' "Ding" widget alerts users to special fares, Backcountry.com's Steep and Cheap highlights great new deals, and InStyle's Hollywood Hair Makeover lets users put celebrity do's on their own photos for fun and to help with copycat styling. Garfield, in a memorable turn of phrase, suggests that "branded widgets are the refrigerator magnets of the Brave New World."
But what about B2B? Can widgets work in the more sober world of high-value solutions? I'd say absolutely yes, and Garfield himself suggests a few possible directions. UPS already has a widget to help users schedule and track shipments. Nike has a widget to help users keep up with their running and connect more easily to Nike Plus. Why not borrow the same concept for business users by providing simple, ongoing access to technical support, professional advice, or industry news?
Widgets are just another tool, of course, in a marketing environment overloaded with new tools. Viewed in a B2B context, though, they offer a number of potential advantages as marketers adapt their strategies to the demands of time-starved, buyer-driven markets:
- Enables you to go where the users already spend time, rather than relying on them to come to your site
- Emphasis on providing value to the user, otherwise they'll pay no attention
- Simple and inexpensive to produce and track -- and thus to experiment with
- Potential for ongoing engagement with the user
- Natural tie-in with other value-providing tactics, including live and online events and publications
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